Online Education in HEIs in Bangladesh moderated by COVID-19: Modified UTAUT2

Abstract

The whole world, including Bangladesh is brought to a standstill by the pandemic of COVID-19.  All the hustling-bustling of a densely populated country has come to a quiescent halt; the only sound remaining is the whisper of anxiety. The HEIs in Bangladesh is also struggled to react to this sudden catastrophe; magnified by uncertainties.  Compared to public universities, the private universities of the country managed to react the fastest and are making sweeping changes in a very short period of time, shifting traditional face-to-face course content/teaching to online content/teaching. The shift to fully functional online teaching learning platform was sudden and with minimum preparation. To investigate the perception of the private universities community in Bangladesh with this new teaching learning method, this paper adopted the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, focuses on stakeholders’ behavioral intention, availability of the online platform, prior experience, attitude towards usage (ease of use and usefulness) and most importantly the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the paper also discusses the issues of social and cultural impact. It was found that all the UTAUT attributes are positively correlated with the Behavioral Intention and eventually to Use Behavior of students in adopting online education. Moreover, unexpected, and unprecedented impact of COVID-19 pandemic also effected their behavioral intention towards accepting online education.